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The American painter smothers her paintings in heavy layers of gooey paint. This first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her medium, but significant themes are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as a leading painters of her era – is all about texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, real high-level aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s plenty to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

These pieces in the first gallery are full of enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one depicts a collection of forms stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their path. In another features a figure receiving a huge mask in an odd initiation ritual in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to read any of this as political, as observation on America’s condition, on how society is divided and furious, and crowd psychology is transforming all to waste.

The Kiss by Dana Schutz.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to shift her focus to the people in power, instead of the masses that follow them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a couple console each other in a scene filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests naked, forlorn and helpless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with references. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to mainstream media (It seems certain that a particular work is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). You could spend hours spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, for my money, there are two relatively clear themes: the ruling class, and the crowds that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about that. Back in 2017, her painting a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched by racist perpetrators in a southern state in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of exploiting black death for her own gain. A protester picketed the work each day, and others demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of African-American suffering was the major headline of the biennial. It was the peak of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a society increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get angry at this heartfelt, sorrowful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical painting at the highest level.